Who Killed Captain Alex?/Bad Black (2010/2016)

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Director: Nabwana I.G.G.

Screenplay: Nabwana I.G.G. (Alan Hofmanis for Bad Black)

Cast: (Who Killed Captain Alex?) Kakule William as Captain Alex; Kakule Wilson as Alex; Sserunya Ernest as Richard; G. Puffs as Puffs; Faizat Muhammed as Natasha; Bisaso Dauda as Rock; Nakyambadde Prossy as Ritah

(Bad Black) Nalwanga Gloria as Bad Black; Alan "Ssali" Hofmanis as Doctor Ssali; Bisaso Dauda as Hirigi

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

At the time of this review, Ugandan filmmaker Nabwana I.G.G. would have seen a film in a cinema for the first time in his life, his film Crazy World (recut for 2019) premiering at midnight at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival. Alongside the twitter image of him stood alongside one of my own personal filmmaking heroes, Takashi Miike, it's arguably a fairytale about one man, in a poverty stricken slum named Wakaliga, in Uganda's capital of Kampala, who'd eventually create a studio there called Wakaliwood that not only managed to catch the world on fire with their work, but has even gotten to the point that not only did the studio help the community, as everyone wanted to work with him, but that even the president of Uganda Yoweri Museveni included support for the film industry in his 2016 campaign promises. The best part is that it's by way of making action films, a genre that is usually dismissed, the first apparently costing less than $200 to make and becoming the online sensation called Who Killed Captain Alex?.

Who Killed Captain Alex? was a film I merely viewed as a curiosity when I first saw it. A greater bit of background really however grows the joys of Alex as a film and adds an emotional heft to both a) really cheaply made and wonderfully charming action films, and b) in lieu that I'm not a huge action film fan in the slightest. I've always found, to be honest, that unless I care for the stories or the craft is felt to be done at the best possible, that even action scenes in any film usually lead to me turning off and feeling bored. To which these Ugandan action films have an entire layer of cultural and idiosyncratic aspects, from where they come from and how they were even made, which is the greater wealth for me, alongside the fact that here, you definitely see the hard work to even coordinate these films' action scenes and learn to appreciate them. These aspects would grow on from Alex to Bad Black, Nabwana I.G.G.'s bigger film in which Wakaliwood sincerely has the goal to keep improving and making better films the more I.G.G. and everyone else in Wakaliga make them.

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A poignant detail is knowing I.G.G. grew up during the regime of Idi Amin; how the transition to the violent background to violent films inspired by American action cinema and martial arts cinema might surprise some, but alongside the fact the tone of these films is intentionally more playful, there's inherently a more healthier and complex viewpoint to these films, where some incredible dark jokes are found, not just those Video Joker (V.J.) Emmie's commentary in these films, but the material itself onscreen. Then there's the simple fact they are made by people clearly enjoying themselves, removing all the horrors of real life violence by way of this heightened exaggerated world where men and women are bad assess and the true sign of coolness is when Emmie names you Uganda's equivalent of a legendary action star.

Just trying to make a film with Who Killed Captain Alex? there's a sense of time, sweat and tears having to be spent to create where, even in the current films, the guns were made from carved wood and pieces of metal, with CGI blood splatter or condoms filled with red paint (cow's blood originally until at some point the more sanitary choice wisely chosen), made by an entire community where even the children are being taught martial arts by I.G.G.'s own brother half-brother and star Robert Kizito, who learnt martial arts originally by finding Chinese martial arts magazines on the market and recreating the moves self-taught.

There's even an American in said community, as after only seeing a second of Alex's trailer, Alan "Ssali" Hofmanis shipped himself from Manhattan to live in Wakaliga and has brought his own knowledge to help with this community whilst playing anyone from "America's Jean-Claude Van Damme" or Jesus Christ in a Christian music video. That's not even daring to forget a certain distinction for these films, VJ Emmie, whose style of providing humorous quipping over films he informs the viewer over his track for Alex is custom to Ugandan film watching; he not only adds a lightness to the material but eventually he became such a distinct part of these films Nabwana I.G.G. started building his films entirely around Emmie quipping one-liners over them as part of the final cut.

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The sense of catharsis for these films is palpable especially with this background context, especially as in knowledge that Wakaliga was a slum, suffering from poverty, which has found a hub for everyone to collaborate on and bring an industry to the area. And that's not something, the word "slum", to bandy about glibly either; Who Killed Captain Alex>, when I had more precise subtitles to view it with alongside Emmie's English VJ commentary, openly brings up jokes about the story, where the military are trying to take out the villainous Tiger Mafia, in a farcical nature whilst particularly with Emmie having a lot of morbid humour that is to be found in Bad Black too. In general even the studio in its advertising and promotional image plays off this corpse black humour; in any other context jokes about cannibalism and Ebola would be offensive, but when black Ugandans are making these jokes, it not only reveals a healthy world view of dealing with subjects, as long as expose how naive Westerners are in how this community doesn't bat an eyelid to making violent action films, but they keep promising and making films about them, at one point I.G.G. even wanting to make a film where Baraka Obama visits Uganda and gets kidnapped by cannibals¹.

It's clear everyone who contributes to Wakaliwood has no issues finding humour in this material. They are as happy to even make light of the bleaker things in life, jokes in the script and Emmie between both films about streams being where human waste also goes in, or just revelling in some of the absurdities of the plots themselves, like Emmie mocking the main villain in Alex loving his brother when he's taken captive by the heroes.

Emmie just by himself, once you get used to him, is a key virtue to these films; whilst Who Killed Captain Alex? without his VJ commentary is interesting, it's not surprising the American Genre Film Archive release of these two films in 2019 has Bad Black with only Emmie talking over it, as its clear the joker's as much the texture and fun of the films as what's onscreen. Alex in particular is at times a ridiculous film, in lieu to its history as the first of these films to exist, and it's clear that with absolutely love for what they made, everyone's still in good humour about a film which has a lot of quirks. Where they managed to still have a green screen helicopter sequence, with a helicopter so digitally created its part of the charm, or the bizarre use of a panpipe instrumental cover of Kiss from the Rose by Seal used that leads to one of Emmie's funniest improvisations alongside calling giant birds in one scene "dinosaurs". The action when it transpires is utter chaos, a mess of quick editing at times and CGI exploding buildings, but in lieu to its budget its admirable, and thankfully with both Alex and Bad Black the director-writer learnt the virtue that his films shouldn't be too long, Alex just over an hour and Bad Black less than eighty minutes.

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And Alex in particular has to be held higher as it comes from a community where, especially back then, Nabwana I.G.G. had to learn how to build his own computers to create those CGI effects and put the film together, in a community where even the reliability of electricity could be erratic. Notably, tragically, the film is technically "lost", the only surviving backup a standard DVD version as he had to delete and sacrifice the original materials to even make another film, something the opening text is adamant to point out. Also if anything, with the aforementioned involvement of Robert Kizito, the martial arts in context of this film are actually incredible to see, particularly from Kizito as the brother who is out for revenge for the death of his brother, the titular Captain Alex, where even with the speeded up footage it's a surprise to witness this far back in Wakaliwood' history.  

Watched without Emmie, Alex does lose a bit, and it says a great deal as mentioned the later films were made around him, the VJ contributing a lot of great moments like Kizito being dubbed Uganda's Bruce Lee, "Bruce U", or how the stand out character from Bad Black, a young boy playing a super strong assistant to Hofmanis' as an American doctor, is dubbed by Emmie "Wesley Snipes".

Move to 2016 with Bad Black, I.G.G became more ambitious as his international recognition grew, acknowledged in how this feels like a shift up in trying to improve the filmmaking and technical craft. There's also a jump in ambition in the storytelling, which does lunge from plot point to plot point with some crudeness, but the widening scale is found in how, even if there's no attempt to differentiate them, the plot even exists in multiple time scales which aren't always in chronological order in the slightest on purpose. A use of fast forward abruptly also shows a promising side of visual humour, and the brief segment of "Uganda's first Women-In-Prison Movie" does also reveal the highlight of a female prisoner Emmie starts calling Godzilla, rightly so as she batters anything that moves. There's even a passage that is played entirely seriously, with Emmie not making any jokes in the slightest, in which our titular anti-heroine as a child is stuck under abusive adults who force homeless children to beg on the streets, causing one to see that even a film like this meant to be fun is going out of its way to still drawn from real life issues for a community.

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Bad Black is still a romp mind, progressive further in production with superimposed model cars for car crashes, alongside an actual car chase for a brief moment which (involving green screen) even includes a child actor having a stunt scene. At this point, already mentioned, Hofmanis was part of the community at this point, thus leading to the best aspect of the whole of Bad Black between him and the young boy, part of Wakaliwood's child star system, dubbed Wesley Snipes in which the later has to whip the adult into shape to live up to his family's history of being commandos. It says a lot, to my sense of humour and how Nabwana I.G.G. knows innately to play to the audience, in which filming a scene of Hofmanis trying to martial arts kick cabbages into pieces besides cows, he keeps the shot in immediately after one kick of one of those cows eating the remains.  

In terms of no budget, micro budget cinema, these pair make a potentially big cultural mark in how, as regional world cinema, this community have jumped out in terms of a movement of Ugandan cinema where, whilst there are films made there, these films will probably be the most well known and are actually having a beneficial influence on said locale were poverty is a huge issue. The fact a president promises to financially assist the film industry as a result of Wakaliwood in his election campaign is utterly alien to Western cinema, where outsiders are pushed out by huge conglomerates or Hollywood.

Honestly, the only bad aspect to the entire pair is that in Alex, because the subtitles are clearer, you have a character using the term "faggot" at least in the translation of Swahili dialogue, which is a shame and also completely out of tone with what Nabwana I.G.G.'s cinema is. Whilst it's gory and absurd, it'd be a terrible experience for I.G.G.'s films if he ever made anything nasty, particularly when Alex ends with a sung tribute to grandmothers and has a wholesome air of accomplishment. The one bad moment, merely a second, is utterly against the goodwill and wholesomeness that Nabwana I.G.G.'s films and Wakaliwood's materials suggest, and thankfully, that's the only thing between the films that sticks out. Even the sex jokes, where you learn that "beat the rat" is apparently Ugandan slang of sleeping together, feel tonally appropriate; even Emmie dubbing over a torture scene of a female character, one of Richard's brides in a flashback, of her having being caught watching Nollywood films has an appropriate streak of twisted humour that's humorous than tasteless.

The pair together was utterly enjoyment as you might have gathered, Who Killed Captain Alex? in particular having grown in terms of being a micro-budget cult film which went from just being a fascinating oddity but something truly admirable, any flaws taken in account to how difficult it would've been to just make the film from nothing. Together the films perfectly encapsulate that dream that anyone and everyone can make a film if they have a film camera that will enrapture people, here actually happening for real and managing, through the hard work Wakaliwood did, to put Nabwana I.G.G. and everyone in his community on the map. Hence, I.G.G. got to go to the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019 and might rise even further up the more ambitious and determined he is.

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1) HERE

Youth Without Youth (2007)

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Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Screenplay: Francis Ford Coppola

Based on the Novel by Mircea Eliade

Cast: Tim Roth as Dominic Matei; Alexandra Maria Lara as Laura/ Veronica; Bruno Ganz as Professor Stanciulescu; André Hennicke as Josef Rudolf; Marcel Iureș as Professor Giuseppe Tucci; Adrian Pintea as Pandit

Youth Without Youth is an odd film, I won't deny it. Admittedly adapted from a novel by Mircea Eliade, a lot of this curious premise - in which an old lecturer Dominic Matei (Tim Roth) is hit by lightning grows young, can read books by merely looking at time, and becomes a superhuman intelligence - is likely from there, something I will get into later. As much of it though is knowing Francis Ford Coppola made the film without compromise, wrote the film clearly with no compromise and will shot the material like a boss.

He's not made a film since Twixt (2011)¹, part of a trilogy not connected together barring the fact that, returning to cinema briefly, the legendary director of the Godfather trilogy made three films on his own whims having spent over ten years away tending his winery - Tetro (2009) and Twixt, the later an odd experience meant to be a horror film co-edited by viewers but becoming a 3D horror film where Val Kilmer occasionally talks to the ghost of Edgar Allen Poe, were idiosyncratic to say the least, but Youth Without Youth was a sudden return which referenced back to both his virtues and his notoriety of being obsessed with making distinct films.

Starting under Roger Corman and a string of films by the end of the sixties to find his own voice, his career reached its peak in the seventies, not only with the incredible success of the first two Godfather films but The Conversation (1974), before finishing the decade with Apocalypse Now (1979), famously the Vietnam War adaptation of Hearts of Darkness that turned into a warzone on set in its chaos. It's only into the eighties where, while he'd make highly regarded films like One From the Heart (1981) and Rumble Fish (1983), his star started to falter in terms of One from the Heart's disastrous box office success forcing him to have to spend the rest of the eighties recouping its cost. In fact into the early nineties, economic reasons was one of the reasons the divisive third Godfather film was even made, thought at least he also made making Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), which I'll defend barring Keanu Reeves trying an English accent.

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By the end of the nineties, whilst The Rainmaker (1997) was more of a John Grisham adaptation than a Coppola film, the Robin Williams family film Jack (1996) was considered a nadir. Returning in 2007, Coppola made both a luscious and frankly bug nuts film, as in Roth plays a man whom as if given a second chance of life, grows young through the thunderbolt of youth, exploring the history of human language, and human intelligence in general, whilst in the midst of Nazi occupied Austria finding himself eyed by Nazis wanting to make superman from his example. Having lost of the love of his life years ago, she'll eventually return as Veronica (Alexandra Maria Lara), almost reincarnated and also hit by lightning, becoming a conduit for ancient female Buddhists and souls that regress to her physical ailment to the beginning of human communication.

It's a difficult film in them to unpack, its source material clearly belonging to magical realism which intermingled World War II drama, a drama about linguistics, romance and tragedy, all alongside an ending which seems like it's going to cop out and say it's all a dream, which it might've all been still, but plays more like a circular story of a man's life that is from an entirely different era of cinema than the 2000s. It's a film, bluntly, where you need to accept the premise entirely or you'd hate it. The first half, set in WWII Romania does calmly take you through the premise, in which the late Bruno Ganz is a doctor fascinated by him during his treatment for the lightning strike, showing slowly the curious abilities and quirks Roth's characters has acquired. The second half onwards however, when it jumps in time over decades with Veronica possessed by spirits, excursions to Buddhist tombs in other countries and a random cameo by Matt Damon, is a further leap to go with. The notable thing is that the source novella author Mircea Eliade, from Romania, was a historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago who wrote about the concept of the religious experience and was, befittingly, fluent in multiple languages. Naturally for someone who wrote fiction and non-fiction work equally, his source material if Youth Without Youth is accurate is a very idiosyncratic work nourished by the kind of esoteric subject matter Eliade studied in his life. Its however subject matter that is an acquired taste for a larger audience, so you as an audience have to come to this particular adaptation with this in mind.

Coppola, mind, has always shot his films with an incredible scale, which can seesaw in terms of the content between the elegant to the opposite spectrum of the hallucinogenic. Both sides are felt with Youth Without Youth, a lush period film which transitions from WWII Romania to over the next few decades to the seventies, all with the tone of a classic period drama. It's a scale appropriate for a film where the film gets surreal, like Tim Roth having a doppelganger he can talk to in both mirrors and his dreams, Coppola really qualifing as deserving the term "cinematic" with his work. It works with Youth Without Youth, the one virtue to take from it that at least its logic makes sense because the world is built enough to make it acceptable. It effectively takes a film like The English Patient (1996), the same period war drama with English speaking actors in exotic locals, but imagines if Ralph Fiennes had psychic powers. The supernatural content has deeper themes however, which is why it still works - Roth, good in the lead, eventually finding himself asking whether his obsession is worth the sacrifice, finding himself also becoming obsessed in the Atomic Age that nukes are going to destroy the world, all whilst his doppelganger argues it's a necessary for the evolution of super humans to take place.

Does Youth Without Youth work? For myself yes, as a curious hybrid. It is, for obvious reasons, very esoteric and wouldn't have won over casual fans of Francis Ford Coppola's work. It is however clearly made by a man who didn't need to get back into the director's seat and, when he decided to, was because he wanted to make this film and as good as possible. As mentioned, he'd make two more films in this unofficial trilogy, none of them connected in the slightest in terms of style or subject matter, but in terms of a director having a short burst of creativity between 2007-2011 where he was still being experimental, Tetro still (as a drama starring Vincent Gallo) with a bold monochrome look and tone having a boldness alongside Youth Without Youth and Twixt. Whilst Youth Without Youth is not abstract, it's certainly engaging.

Abstract Spectrum: Magical Realism/Surreal

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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1) Well, there is an ongoing film project named Distant Vision, which I didn't know about until this review, which has had "proof of concept" screenings at two American education institutions between 2015 and 2015.

Bat Pussy (1973)

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Director: Anonymous

Cast: Buddy; Dora Dildo; Sam

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

This'll be an awkward review. Porn, whilst we are in a more open minded world, still has a stigma especially in the United Kingdom, where on one hand four mothers within the recent year have shot a porn film (Mums Make Porn (2019), a Channel 4 series) to promote a healthy interpretive, but we still have the laws dictating our porn is sold in sporadically located sex shops alongside the whole farce of the government trying to crack down on the online equivalent. Also there's the reason that John Water famously has never liked pornography, describing it as "gynaecologic", a vulnerability and messiness to the human body which is vastly different from the fantasy of erotica and, once you go beyond the glamour of large budgeted porn, is found in anything else, something we are yet to struggle with and is as much to even be found in society's issue of body objectification, as frankly the idealised images (especially forced onto women) goes against the reality of the body itself. Also, and let's be honest, even if that wasn't an issue, aesthetics are an important part, be it literal and emotionally, to sensuality, and today's subject isn't slightly in this ballpark...

...all because this is all a ridiculous over-the-top prologue to Bat Pussy, a work which doesn't deserve it. But it's also perversely a film the American Genre Film Archive have proudly released on Blu Ray, one that a) had its only surviving film celluloid found in the back room of the Paris adult movie theatre in Memphis, Tennessee by musician and filmmaker Mike McCarthy, and b) got a released through Something Weird Video beforehand in the VHS era to create its infamy.  In knowledge that c) it is restricted for them to where the AGFA can sell it, as it notoriously got pulled off Amazon US, and d) by their own work, they have also released a theatrical matinee film which culls non-porn scenes from porn horror films, deliberately for psychotronic reasons but possibly due to how trying to get people to watch porn is not appealing still for many, this is a pretty ballsy release even for a company who has also released SOV video cinema on DVD only format. It's more so as, whilst those SOV horrors have a fun factor to them, Bat Pussy is a truly misanthropic car crash of American paraphernalia where a group of people, three actors and the film maker(s), tried to cash in on making a porn film, only for it to go horribly wrong.

No one knows who made the film, but whilst it's no way near as feel-bad as I thought it'd be, its reputation for killing passion is truth in advertising, laced with a curious farce that leaves sympathetic for the cast. What transpires is that a man and a woman were hired to star in this film, set mainly in one bedroom. They may be a couple, and they are completely removed from a stereotypical image of porn stars. She is a full figured woman with hair nearly approved for a B-52s cover band (which is a compliment to say the least), he an older guy whose figure is both pudgy yet paradoxically thin, who notable can talk his way being a sexual tyrannosaurus but cannot back it up, which immediately sabotages the shoot whilst he just shows an oral fixation instead.

The notoriety of this film really comes from the fact that, as they cannot have sex, the pair bicker a lot and, for all the times the couple shows affection, it also gets nasty at moments too. The question about being an actual couple having a spat is felt as the forth wall is broke at numerous times. The actors have to coordinate themselves out of character, and where the titular Bat Pussy falls off the central bed in an attempted threesome, and may have bumped the back of her head, the male actor checks she is okay. Sound is turned down whenever the conversation clearly isn't meant to be on film, but some of it directly to the film crew is heard.

Bat Pussy, played by "Dora Dildo" (sic), is introduced in an outhouse feeling her bat-sense tingling that someone is making porn in her environment she is not involved in. The actress' looks like a woman across the street you might bump into on a regular day, trying her best and with the sense that she's got the most charisma out of the trio. Her character also travels to crimes on a Space Hooper, which is shown to be as cumbersome over long distances as it sounds. You have to see it to believe it, as it gives us rural footage to break up the film and can also be used as a weapon to batter a guy when he tries to harass a female bystander.

The result altogether is shambolic - the closest thing to hardcore is Dora's titular surname being involved, but the film is still grimy and seedy, more potentially embarrassing to be caught watching than most other porn. It's not inherently the sex either, which isn't even really there, but returning to that issue that porn also brings up the potential vulnerability of the human body, its growth in interest jarring against the innate embarrassment (especially in the United Kingdom) over the naked body too let alone any of its functions. When this film, which is halfway through before the titular star gets on the Space Hopper, takes it further by just having awkward, uncomfortable dry spots, it's even more likely to exhibit the vulnerability. Plus this is a film that, for all the affection shown between the main couple, is a bitter one which the male actor walking off the set never to be seen again whilst the actresses have to salvage a climax. (Forgive the crass pun).

Is Bat Pussy any good? No, this is entirely to be watched as a sociological item, or you'll be sorely disappointed or/and incredibly put off. It says a lot that I never had a sense of shame, shock or felt my libido had been permanently damaged watching Bat Pussy, thus undercutting the advertising. It's still to be approached with caution or as a sideshow curiosity to bemuse punters - a failure that still got a film print to try to salvage some money, and has inexplicably become a cult item since it was first released by Something Weird Video and then the AGFA. If anyone who made this film ever found out about this, if they are alive, who knows what'd they think but it'd be a baffled one in likelihood.

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Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)

Director: Darren Lynn Bousman

Screenplay: Terrance Zdunich and Darren Smith

Based on the musical by Terrance Zdunich and Darren Smith

Cast: Alexa Vega as Shilo Wallace; Paul Sorvino as Rotti Largo; Anthony Stewart Head as Nathan Wallace; Sarah Brightman as Blind Mag; Paris Hilton as Amber Sweet; Bill Moseley as Luigi Largo; Nivek Ogre as Pavi Largo; Terrance Zdunich as GraveRobber; Sarah Power as Marni Wallace

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

I look to Repo and think of Blue Banana. Note to readers from outside the United Kingdom, but the closest thing to a brand mainstream alt-Goth accessory store in my neck of the woods was called Blue Banana.  I also admit, whilst never at any time becoming a proper Goth, mainly because I don't think baring suits the clothing wouldn't suit me in the slightest, I've always found a greater appeal with the aesthetic, effected by having friends as a young teenager who got into the style, and to the point I wonder if I accidentally missed my Goth years as a teenager by ignorance. It helps, even if didn't like the music, that I was growing up when the likes of Evanescence becoming popular; admittedly they are a divisive band, but like the growing prominence of European symphonic metal bands, I'm pretty sure that they helped a lot of people find their Goth years (or full Goth lifestyle) knee deep in the same era of nu metal would die out.

This is poignant to start with as, personally, I liked the aesthetic of Repo even if it's a kitschy mainstream aesthetic. We have a terrible habit in our culture to dismiss alt-Goth-emo culture, made even more problematic as there was also a habit of engendered insults against this culture, which is poignant as the same year Repo came out, the first Twilight film was also released. Definitely more successful than Darren Lynn Bousman's curious rock musical misfire, we're aware of all the issues the franchise had, but there was inherently a problem for me of how the jokes could be derogatory against young female fans, particularly as you could also find descriptions like "overweight" which also revealed an emblematic issue with sexism.

This is poignant as, honestly, Repo feels like the kind of film which appeals to anyone regardless of gender, as opposite to Bousman's main job of helming Saw franchise sequels as you can get, managing to win enough credit with Lionsgate to get this adaptation of a rock musical onscreen. This, for all its gore, is obsessed with its music, has all the clichés of mainstream Goth/alternative culture, and its over-the-top aesthetic, a CGI/Vaseline-on-the-lenses style combining Evanescence music videos with a dystopian metropolis is appealing for me particularly. (Strangely, it's reminiscent of when Takashi Miike finished the Dead or Alive trilogy with 2000's Final, a shot on standard digital camera dystopian sci-fi film shot in Hong Kong.) Repo also just looks like the content of a Bizarre magazine, a sadly now defunct British alternative culture magazine, minus all the nudity and cheesecake photography it had.

A film is an oddity too, for where else do you envision Bill Moseley, Paris Hilton and Nivek Ogre of the cult industrial band Skinny Puppy as deranged siblings of a corrupt medical company? Only Repo, which does evoke that, whilst The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) is so powerful even Disney's embargo on retrospective theatrical bookings can't touch it, we'd all gladly have another great cult musical especially of the horror ilk in existence. Admittedly, for all my interest in Repo, it's entirely a flop, an admirable one but one that evokes that, whilst sadly now Disney property, Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise (1974) is what we all need to go to for a fix until another great one may hopefully appear one day.

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And it's neither because of the aesthetic either Repo fails, returning to that problematic issue of how we easily dismiss this type of aesthetic, but that Repo becomes slight anyway. For all its exposition, even comic book illustrated sequences to explain back-story, Repo barely gets past its main plot and flesh out its world or characters. I don't necessarily blame the source material entirety for this either, instead feeling like a stage rock opera wasn't expanded enough for the cinema. Musically, it's an acquired taste, taking influence from post-nu metal and the mainstream interesting of industrial metal with a nice filtering of opera and classical music motifs. It does have a couple of legitimately bad song, actually bad songs few would like whatever taste, unfortunately both fostered onto Alexa Vega, playing the lead character, two dreadful sub pop punk pieces including lyrics about her genes being a bitch as she is incapacitated by a medicated illness that leaves her locked up in her fathers' home. For the most part in terms of the performances, it's prominent (barring one figure I'll mention later) that the most confident singer in the cast is Terrance Zdunich, a co-creator of the original material playing the narrator and a drug dealer whose wares are a bootlegged painkiller extracted from the noses of corpses.

The slightness of the film causes many problems. As I mentioned, this is a film where Bill Moseley plays a sociopath whose related to Paris Hilton, a surgery addicted woman, and Nivek Ogre, who plays another psychopath who steals other peoples' faces to wear, who are barely seen throughout. Even The Rocky Horror Picture Show had downtime to build its world, but here for all its zest and even a carnival freak show sequence, the film feels like it has barely built up its many subplots, for me proof that whenever a film zips along constantly, (new exposition, more gore scene, more, more) that's actually a bad sign for a film.

Only Anthony Stuart Head as a result really stands out, mainly because he possible got the memo of what was intended and could flesh it out. Everyone else is merely over the top (Moseley, Hilton and Ogre) or suffers the curse of playing the bland protagonist (Vega), with even Paul Sorvino as the big evil not used as he should've been, leaving Head  as having the most rewarding performance. Its befitting a career that can go from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the comedy show Little Britain, as he has the biggest challenge both to sing and play a character with two sides, both the loving widowed father and the maniacal repo man who repossess organs gruesomely, which he succeeds in. Even the fact he uses two different voices, obvious but effective, has merit.

It sucks, in hindsight, as done better Repo could've been a success even if it was kitschy, be it classical soprano Sarah Brightman as a Goth Lolita dressed corporate opera singer with holographic robot eyes to all the low budget graveyard/medieval sets, alongside the Grand Guignol wanton gore. There's even a little innate elegance dues to its inspirations - a large and prominent female cast, opera and classical melodies in the score, and the costume designers and production creators having a field day in general. It's just that, painfully, for the entire attempt for a grandiose story - betrayal, inheritance - the film struggles to get to the desired melodramatic heft. Even when it literally ends on a stage within this adaptation of a stage production, Repo feels incredibly slight, leaving an admirable risk for Liongate and Darren Lynn Bousman to create but not a successful one.

From https://popmatters-img.rbl.ms/simage/
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Don't Hug Me. I'm Scared Episodes 4-6 (2015-16)

From https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original
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Directors: Joseph Pelling and Becky Sloan

Screenplay: Joseph Pelling, Becky Sloan and Baker Terry

Cast: Baker Terry as Yellow Guy / Duck Guy / Additional Characters (voice); Joseph Pelling as Red Guy (voice); Becky Sloan as Lamp / Spinach Can / Sketchbook / Additional Voices (voice); Royngtt as Colin / Additional Voices (voice) ; Kellen Goff as Additional Voices (voice)

[The following is a continuation of a review covering the first three segments of this web video series. Follow the link HERE to that first review.]

[Some Plot Spoilers Ahead]

Episode 4 is my personal favourite of the entire web series. Already beginning with a delayed gag, expecting another object to suddenly begin singing, it gets off to a great start in which an obsolete computer, down to his electronically distorted voice, starts to go on about the virtues of computers. The virtue of this episode is how it doesn't even need to use the gore and nastiness of before for its creepy horror, instead being working against this in creative ways. This involves deliberately dated glitchy animation, which appeals to my love for obsolete animation, and a slyer sense of humour. The message is pretty obvious too - a computer that never gets around to answering the question the trio initially wanted settled, and the computer world a place of time wasting tasks such as consumerism or "DIGITAL STYLE!!", to repeat probably the most quotable dialogue of the whole series.

At this point, this is without question one of the most lavishly put together web-exclusive productions outside of large conglomerates, and this is worth bringing up in knowledge that the later episodes from two to six, including Kickstarter campaigns, were soon put into production when the show started gaining a fan base, becoming as much a production that showcased their talents alongside with everyone making these props and characters. Episode four does start to build to a larger scale story as well as Red Guy, our most matter-of-fact figure with his deadpan rebuttals, ends up breaking out of this reality and in a curious set of circumstances literally has his head explode. The result of this plot thread is open to interpretation, but it offers a lot of material to keep the series afresh, especially as this figure has the most dynamic plot thread onwards, even if he's not actually in Episode 5 barring the end credits.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dWGBNC0roEs/maxresdefault.jpg

Episode 5 is a flashback to the ghoulishness of the first half, but with knowledge of the series building, it makes a good follow on. If anything the joke's strong on the get-go as, with Duck and Yellow Guy being tormented by a pair singing about healthy eating, something which I can't help is openly mocking fads as much as it is a gabled lesson as done before in the series, as they contradict themselves, recommend white sauce as a staple diet one minute and not the other, and have a convoluted diagram of the body being represented by a literal house where good food stays for a party. The nonsensical lessons grow revisiting this web series, in that fan theories can have a detrimental effect on what could have intentionally been written as nonsense on purpose, the completely illogical still able to be intelligent and a critique of society in how their guides to people can be up to question if holes are punched into their logic. One interesting idea, suggested by YouTuber Inside the Mind¹, which evokes this is how, in his idea the series is about growing up, that the show comes from the perspective of a child, the lessons coming off as nonsense as kids might not understand the words spoken to them, which is a fascinating take on from one of the show's funniest and more rewarding aspects.

Episode 6, which was the conclusion before an announcement of a series was brought up n 2018, ends on a very different note. Notable there's a suggestion that there's another world, shot in a realistic aesthetic, where Red Guy lives a banal life working in an office. This has made a healthy amount of speculation about what the Episode's about be created, which isn't to deny considering it's a bold choice that would've led to these theories just in the sudden change in reality that's taking place. That the final episode, without spoiling it entirely, as the Yellow Guy is left in the original house tormented by various singing figures, involves the plug being pulled literalised is with a sense of built up spectacle, a reset button that concludes in a logic of its own.

Episode 6 was also built up to even as far back as Episode 2, with the series having various cameos by Roy Gribbleston, a figure painted as Yellow Guy's father who even had a production credit on the Don't Hug Me... episodes themselves, adding layers which clearly left a lot unsaid to tease the viewership. Certainly this web series builds to a great conclusion, a risk taken with almost a pastiche mood of David Lynch felt throughout, such as with Gribbleston floating along at one point with a comically stretched arm. There's also a clear influence from British comedy, Red Guy in an office pissing about with a folder, as if it could sing, much to the bafflement of his similar looking co-worker clearly indebted to post 2000s comedy.

From https://blinkinkcdn.s3.amazonaws.com/_wide_800/Becky_and
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Don't Hug Me. I'm Scared is an applaudable project, especially now on revisiting it I can move beyond its initial premise of perverting this type of children's show aesthetic and see what it was built like. A lot of questions were left open to what it actually means - interestingly, as Inside the Mind points to, Joseph Pelling and Becky Sloan co-wrote an episode of The Amazing World of Gumball called The Puppets (2017) in which the protagonists are tormented by their childhood toys and end up walking away from their childhood memories to grow up, an interesting comparison to make with some of the symbolism found here. Admittedly, there's also a lot of speculation that means taking this and any idea with a pinch of salt, especially as the lead creators aren't telling us anything. For me, even if it wasn't the intention of the first episode, there was clearly a lot of satire about children's programming peppered throughout, and certainly when we get to the final, once you start bringing in alternative realities when Red Guy is being heckled on karaoke night for trying to start an edutainment sing-along, you are playing into the idea for me of the original context being either a nightmare or a trap to escape.

Also, it is interesting to see a production which could've easily been dismissed, as I initially did, as another web video that just turns children's iconography into nightmare fuel. In comparison, this is the high bar, a high quality labour of love which got more idiosyncratic for the better as the sequel episodes were created. Another question is left about the promise of a TV series, an entirely different structure to work with and certainly an entirely different conversation to have if it ever happens...

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Surreal

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

From https://i.redd.it/ii1x619ae0uz.jpg

[Archive]: Sunday School Musical (2008)

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com
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Director: Rachel Lee Goldenberg

Screenplay: Rachel Lee Goldenberg and Ashley Holloway

Cast: Chris Chatman as Zachary; Candise Lakota as Savannah; Krystle Connor as Aundrea; Robert Acinapura as Miles; Amy Ganser as Margaret; Millena Gay as Anita; Dustin Fitzsimons as Charlie; Cliff Tan as Trevor; Mark Hengst as Pastor Joe

First written on 10th July 2013

Continuing with my Archive reviews, here is piece of an entire month of "Bad" cinema from my older blog, which is still in existence but with mind of keeping all my materials together, I've transitioned to here. This was film #12 of The ‘Worst’ of Cinema, back when I was mad enough to coordinate an entire month where each day had a review; eventually, to pull back the curtain like the Wizard in Oz, I cheated by composing the reviews the month before, as with my October horror festivals, but the challenge was felt and I am still proud of these mad little challenges even if they caused more stress than the plan was intended to.

As always, none of the material no matter how embarrassing it is will be altered, just with the grammar and paragraphing changed when required to make it easier to read.

In terms of the review, I was mean to The Asylum, but I will defend the attitude of my older self that by the 2000s this straight-to-video market got exceptionally lazy, even if my rose tinted glasses about Roger Corman have disappeared, and in mind to how I have become found of the low budget curiosities that have made up this era. The line later on that Christians should make their own films has becomes ironically precedent for myself hasn't it though? I confess I haven't dealt into the wave of Christian cinema from the United States that was being made from this era onwards, but by all accounts, the modern strain has none of the nuisance of say, Robert Bresson, instead falling into the kind of very simplified viewpoints that are problematic. We should point these issues out as much in liberal American cinema, but there's as much to clearly find in this wave of Christian cinema of a conservative bent which isn't helping the cause either, not just Kirk Cameron taking a nose dive on metaphorical concrete when he made a very embarrassing defend about Christmas that appeared in some cinemas. There's a lot I'd want to watch and even cover though, not just morbidly as by accounts Indivisible (2018), a war film based on a real life war chaplain, is a fascinating and appropriately complex film I'm now reminded to investigate, so I wouldn't just dismiss this entire cultural movement offhand without an eyewitness account.

As for Sunday School Musical itself? I'd gladly investigate the film again even though I was put off by The Asylum back then because they never lived up by the standard of at least being memorable. Sadly Chris Chatman, the lead who I compliment, never made enough film baring one in post-production called Welcome Matt. The director Rachel Lee Goldenberg, to my surprise, is behind the curious Lifetime film A Deadly Adoption (2015), played entirely straight by all accounts as their usual type of film but starring Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig outside their usual ballpark, marking it a potential curiosity if I can ever track it down. Goldenberg is also unfortunately the directoress of the musical remake of the 1983 film Valley Girl, which has been in limbo due to its casting of YouTuber Logan Paul, a figure whose controversial decision to upload footage of a suicide victim on his YouTube page contributed to the film, which was complete, never getting released.

To soften the tone of that later, incredible dark piece of knowledge I learnt of just putting together this Archive review, I'm also throwing in a bonus mini-one about the live action Fist of the North Star adaptation. Not really reviews, more of a stub, but sod it, since I horde this content on my computer hard drive, why not release it again anyway? Plus it's a reminder that, whilst a 1000 Anime review in truth, if I could ever re-see the 1995 film, based on the Japanese manga/anime franchise, I'd more than happy revisit the film for all the curious tit-bits I mention. I didn't even write, to my surprise, that Malcolm McDowell is also in it of many details long forgotten...

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From http://www.cantstopthemovies.com/wp-content
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Original Review

I worried, looking out of curiosity for reviews of this film online before planning one of my own, that by covering it I fall in danger of taking on the same cheap targets that I questioned professional critics of doing with the Jack and Jill (2011) review. Is anyone who reviews a film like this, including myself, really going to write anything thoughtful, even actually funny, or will this be like a bad video review where you see the whole film dispersed with obvious and bad jokes? Am I just being a hypocrite for reviewing this, and writing this entire introduction?

I have broken a rule set up for this season by reviewing a film made by The Asylum company. I was willing to break the rules here because this movie seemed to be an exception from the material that made me put that rule up in the first place. It’s not about an overgrown, CGI fish monster but a low budget musical designed to take advantage of the High School Musical phenomenon and also be part of the company’s Faith Films subdivision, designed to make Christian themed films. Getting hold of this film was for the promise of a terrible movie, a concept that, as this season has gone on, is pretty questionable now, but in hindsight a genre that is usually extravagantly made turned into such a minuscule budgeted, Christian film was also a fascinating proposition. This kind of melding of genres and concepts in unexpected ways is like viewing abstract Non-Euclidean geometry within a HP Lovecraft story, trying to imagine all of its parts working together without going insane. The film itself is, well, what I have sadly come to expect from The Asylum company; as much as I want to love them, it feels like I keep going back to them like an idiot, as all of us who have reviewed their films, as they secretly praise us for the reviews even if they are negative ones.

When he is transferred to a new school, and away from his adored choir and friends, Zachery (Chris Chatman) finds it difficult to connect to his environment. His grades are failing, the choir at his new school are hopeless in terms of their musical abilities, and the church of his old choir is in danger of closing because of finance issues. However, it is possible that, through joining together the choirs, and winning a competition, that every problem can be solved, all the while he slowly connects to the leader of the new choir Savannah (Candine Lakota) who has to overcome losing her mother only a few months earlier. In the film’s favour, the cast for the most part, especially Chatman, have musical talent; it is great that for such an ill advised take on a musical that there are people in front of the camera who can sing and have charisma, and there are moments where the music they are singing too is trying to be good. Unfortunately, for most of the film, it is also music at its most generic and sterilised rather than really good songs. This could be only my personal taste, but when songs have the same tone and sound to each other it is not a good sign. For the most part, it is merely bland and innocuous, but as with the song set around a bench, it can become terrible.

Sunday School Musical outside the music is worthless. Chatman had the potential to be someone special, if he had made anymore films after this 2008 production, but the rest of the film is cheap looking. It is sad that the practices of former exploitative film companies have not been continued for the most part this era; at least Roger Corman and Italian film producers would hire talented directors and film making personal and let them make whatever they want as long as it could be marketed for cinemas. Even Godfrey Ho had a sense of fun. In this era – where blockbusters hog the cinemas, and digital film cameras and computer effects are cheap – laziness has sadly been allowed to come into this sub culture of cinema. Even straight-to-video films from the yesteryear could attempt to be great works, and while there are still great films made today, wading for them in the mass is even more difficult.

Sunday School Musical is bland looking; unnecessarily frequent and choppy in its editing, and just dull to sit through. I am more likely to sleep through another viewing of this than feel pain. As a cash-grab for High School Musical, which I admit to having not viewed alongside its sequels, it is a half-hearted attempt at a musical that could have been special even if it was a failure. The Cannon Group, back in the 1980s, would have tried something special even on a pittance. The Aslyum group, from Almighty Thor (2011), which I reviewed for this blog, to this, are exceptionally lackadaisical in their attitude.

And what makes this even more disconcerting is that this is supposed to be a Christian film. There is very little in the film that really delves into faith or Christian values at all. It has choirs as it main plot and Savannah’s father is a preacher, but this seems arbitrary. It could be argued that these types of films don’t have to directly tackle issues of faith, but this is pointless as there are films already made that Christians enjoy and gain a lot from, and if there wasn’t, they could make their own films rather than rely on someone like The Asylum. A Christian film for me, as it stands now, should tackle the issues of faith in ordinary life, which Sunday School Musical fails to do at all and instead panders to a lame interpretation of R&B and hip-hop music lacking the bite and meaning to it. Alongside 2012 Doomsday (2008), another of these faith based films by the company I’ve seen, there is something exceptionally wrong about The Asylum’s attitude to these films that Corman or an Italian producer, even Ho, is completely innocent of. Not only are they making lazy rip-offs of blockbusters rather than fun ones like the Italians could make, but it can be argued that they are conning Christians, who would want movies for them, without any attempt at making something interesting. As an agnostic^[1], I can see how something like Sunday School Musical, in its lifelessness, would be insulting to the Christian god, like offering a turd to Him as some kind of sacrificial gift and excepting to be lavished with praise.

And the worst part? I am dumb enough to review another film from them after my bile for Almighty Thor. Admittedly, I had hope for this to be something interesting from The Asylum, and I still want to see Mega Piranha (2010) and their take on the Halloween films, but I have tricked myself again even if I spent only 50p for a second hand disc. Are all of us who review these films, even mock them, just encouraging this sort of filmmaking paradoxically? For all the criticisms I’ve had with the film, I’ve just encouraged more people to watch this film when it should be ignored and vanish from existence. I could have scrapped this review to do this, but to both stroke my ego and out of need to write about this film, I have to post it. If the phrase ‘fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me’ ever applied to any context, this is the perfect time to use it. On my part, I may go for three and please The Asylum again, or actually have some common sense next time.

From https://mojtv.hr/thumb.ashx?path=/images/cc47f58c-fd9d
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[1] Pass six years, I'm also not an agnostic as I wrote this review but a spiritual person, as a result of discovering that I had entirely misinterpreted what "agnostic" meant. Being "Agnostic", which I didn't know writing this review, is actually closer in spectrum to atheism rather than not knowing what a divine godhead might be, but with some philsophical differences of importance, if you research its theological and philosophical beginnings even on Wikipedia. That does leave me in the annoying position of believing in an entity upstairs and soul, but not with any organised religious ship to anchor myself to. Also "spiritualist" doesn't roll off the tongue and just evokes charlatan Victorians Harry Houdini particularly hated, so its a position in dire need of a marketing department to come up with a name for. 

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Bonus: Fist of the North Star (Director: Tony Randel, 1995)

My knowledge of Fist of the North Star is very limited, but a British Kenshiro who looks like the muscular brother of Benedict Cumberbatch, who can still make your head explode, was not what I was expecting but utterly hilarious.

Despite being part of the wave of pop culture films from the 1990s that I am obsessed over, visually part of the era and crammed with the obsessions (end of the world scenario, a cast with everyone from director Melvin Van Peebles to pro-wrestler Vader), it is pretty tedious however. Even if Chris Penn steals every scene he is in, the film’s narrative is incredibly generic and for a film that needs good fight scenes to work, the compromise to their presentation, and the gore from the original manga removed for the most part, undermines the whole project. I’ve never been a fan of Tony Randel, especially of his second Hellraiser film, and I wonder what this’ll been like if it was allowed to be good or as insane as a film like Street Fighter from the same era.